


you'll have to break a few eggs

by HorribleThing



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Headcanon, M/M, Nonbinary Character, absurdly pretty elves, criminally pretty Taako, transactional relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorribleThing/pseuds/HorribleThing
Summary: “You’re gonna be a heartbreaker one day,” she tells him.(Taako uses what he's got to survive.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> How about a heaping helping of headcanons?
> 
> Have some backstory fic before canon renders it null and void.

“You’re gonna be a heartbreaker one day,” she tells him, smiling like she’s proud as she finishes his makeup.  She’s mature and beautiful and Taako wants to be more like her when he’s older.  He wants long hair and pretty clothes and to be able to do his own makeup.

“There’s not a lot that we have.  Most of us aren’t built to be strong like them,” she says nodding her head towards the men setting up the tent.  And he knows he’s not observant, but even then he can sense that he’s different from them.   _ Other _ .  “But we have our own ways of getting by.”  She passes him a small hand mirror.

And he looks like her.  Not in that she’s made him pretty, and she has, she’s made him really, really pretty.  But there’s something about the tone of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the angle of their ears.  He thinks that their hair might even be similar if she didn’t dye hers the same pink as he sees on sweet cakes in bakery windows.

She must see it too, because she says, “I know, right?!  You look like my little… sibling.  My little sibling!  If you stick around we can totally use this when you get older.  Men can be such pervs you wouldn’t even believe it,” she rolls her eyes and he nods like he understands. 

“He’s supposed to help our cook, not be your doll, come on now!” the head of the troupe calls out to them from over by the tent.

“You want to let this go to waste?” she gestures towards his face like he’s something precious, something  _ useful _ .  “Let him hand out fliers with me!”

“Fine, fine!  But the kid had better help with cleanup tonight!”

Out on the street he copies the way she stands and he feels awkward because he’s all angles and he hasn’t grown into his ears yet.  But no one seems to notice, or if they do they don’t say.  He copies the way she stands and copies the way she smiles and copies the way her hands seem to move like birds in flight.  She teaches him how to do a handstand and some part of him feels at home.

 

In the end the cook doesn’t take to him and he’s told that he has to go.

“I wish we could have kept you,” she says, like he’s a pet.  And she cries, but she doesn’t leave them. 

 

(Years later Taako won’t remember her name, because there were so many troupes, so many women like her, but he’ll realize that she couldn’t have been older than eighteen.)

 

“Uh, what?”  The boy is a mercenary, Taako knows that much.  His hands and feet are too big for his body like he’s still growing into them.  He had thought someone closer to his own age might be easier to approach, but that response isn’t much to work with.

“I asked if your group needs someone to cook for them.”  The blank stare he gets is like a deer in the headlights of a battle wagon.  “Look, is my makeup smudged or something?  Because I tried to do the winged eyeliner thing but this humidity is hell.”

“No!  Sorry, I just.  You’re just… really pretty,” the boy says, unable to maintain eye contact.

Taako’s shirt is too big and his pants are threadbare at the knees (not even on purpose) and his boots have holes in them.  But it doesn’t matter.  As he gets older no one notices anymore.

 

So Taako learns to break some hearts.

He learns to laugh at jokes he doesn’t think are funny and smile differently than he would on his own.  He learns how to angle his head down just so and look up through his eyelashes and how to put his hand on a man’s arm in a way that feels like a promise.  He learns how to act like he’s not in over his head.

He learns to find the second or third biggest guy in the room, because the biggest one has nothing to prove, and how to go to them and have them keep him safe.  He’s never as charming as she was, or as smart, but he  _ is _ as pretty.  Beautiful even.  And that’s good enough most of the time.

He learns that “I love you” comes easily to them, and even if he can’t bring himself to say it back he can make them think he feels that way.

He learns just when to slip away, when to leave them wanting more.

 

He learns that you don’t have to feel the panic of being left behind if you’re the one to move on first.

 

(Years later he will wonder if she had the same voice in her head, the same one that he’s heard every day since he was on his own.  The voice that says “I want to survive.  I need to survive.”)

 

“You were incredible,” a guy says to him after a show.  Taako only takes the moment to look at him out of the corner of his eye, but he’s not young, not old either.

“Well keep working at it and soon you’ll be incredible in the kitchen too.”  It’s a stock phrase but he’s got ten minutes to clean up or they’ll leave him behind.  And taking the time to find new people to travel with kind of kills the glow of actually having gold in his purse for a change.

“I don’t mean the cooking, I mean the cooking was incredible too but you just…” he sighs, almost breathless.  And he’s had this sort of effect on guys before, but not in the kitchen.  Well okay in the kitchen a couple of times but a  _ chef _ can’t publicly admit to that.  “Do you need help?” he finally manages. 

Taako is used to finding the second or third biggest guy, not that guy finding him.

“You know what, my dude?  I think I do.”

 

One day he’s out with Sazed and they’re just shopping together.  Just at the market, picking up vegetables.  Like you do when you have a traveling cooking show.

And he just looks at Sazed and-

And Taako thinks that maybe this time he won’t have to pretend.

It feels nice.

  
  


(Years later he will remember that she said “you’re gonna be a heartbreaker,” and not “you’re gonna fall in love.”)

  
  



End file.
